GP Accelerator 2.0: An Open Innovation Platform 

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P Accelerator 2.0, also known as GPA in short, is an innovation platform for the new, young entrepreneurs. Realizing the importance of startups, the most popular mobile operator in Bangladesh, Grameenphone has started this program. It creates opportunities for a startup for attaining a renowned position.

The sponsor of this excellent program is Seedstars and previously, SD Asia. A young group of entrepreneurs, following instructions of a mentor, get a curriculum for a certain period and showcase their innovative ideas throughout the program.

Mostly, this program is known for offering great guidelines to entrepreneurs. The GP Accelerator was founded in 2015. From then, every year 10-12 teams get selected for participating in the program and get training for four months. This program highly supports homegrown technological startups.

This accelerator helps tech startups to empower and grow. It also helps the entrepreneurs in many ways, as they can have validated their ideas, build prototypes, investor access, and many more.

They have equity-free grants and have experiences to work with expert mentors. The mentor of the program makes them understand how their ideas will be investable. 

Many startups have graduated through the GP Accelerator Program. Of them, some names should be mentioned as successful graduates like Repto, Sheba.XYZ, AlterYouth, BankcompareBD, Cramstack, CMED Health, etc. 

Rules of GP Accelerator Program

The GP Accelerator program has certain rules for the applicants-

• The applicant should have a solid working team
• Founder’s age should be 18 years or above than that
• The participants have to be courageous enough to take their startups to a new level.
• The startups should be Technology Startups and they have to be in early stages 
• The applicants should be two full-time co-founders
• Applicant’s gender isn’t a fact, it can be any gender. But the applicant must articulate his/her education level and nationality. 

Benefits of Participation

From this program, participants are benefitted in many ways. Like –

• Participants get $5000 equity-free grant funding 
• Their companies become investable from MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
• They can get suggestions from local, international, and GP expert mentors.
• They get a top-notch curriculum 
• They have full-time support from “Entrepreneur in Residence”
• Their co-working space is GP House
• They get exposures in local and international media 
• They get access to local and international investors and GP digital distribution channels
• They get opportunities to have a partnership with GP or Telenor Group

Grameenphone has another part of this program named “Pre-Accelerator Program”. In this program, approximately 25 teams take part. The duration of this special program is two months. 

For the applicants of this program, Grameenphone has some rules –

• The applicant’s age should be 18 years or above than that
• Related Technology startup of the applicant has to be in early-stage
• The applicant must have validated the idea with a unique proposition 
• If the applicant is a founder then he/she must have a solid team
• The applicant can be of any gender, but he/she must submit proofs about nationality and education level
• Applicant should be courageous enough to showcase his/her idea properly and take that to the next level

The participants will receive benefits in the Bootcamp like turning their ideas into MVP, which will go to the market next. And they will work in GP House under the expert mentors. 

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